Police shooter's mom had 'armory' of 21 guns, says lawyer

Attorney: Guns link mom to son's crime

BRENTWOOD — A "veritable armory" of 21 guns, including a machine gun, was seized from the Hampton Falls home of Beverly Mutrie two years before her son, Cullen, shot four police officers and killed Greenland Police Chief Michael Maloney, according to a police report.

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By Elizabeth Dinan

seacoastonline.com

By Elizabeth Dinan

Posted Nov. 16, 2012 at 11:31 PM

By Elizabeth Dinan
Posted Nov. 16, 2012 at 11:31 PM

» Social News

BRENTWOOD — A "veritable armory" of 21 guns, including a machine gun, was seized from the Hampton Falls home of Beverly Mutrie two years before her son, Cullen, shot four police officers and killed Greenland Police Chief Michael Maloney, according to a police report.

The report was filed with the Rockingham Superior Court on Thursday by attorney Christopher Grant, who is representing four Drug Task Force officers who survived the April 12 shooting.

The shooting occurred at the Greenland home of Cullen Mutrie while the officers were there serving a search warrant related to a drug investigation, police say. According to the attorney general's office, Mutrie also fatally shot his alleged drug-dealing girlfriend, Brittany Tibbetts, then shot and killed himself.

Cullen Mutrie was barred from possessing weapons at the time, as a result of a domestic-violence case and pending felony charges alleging his possession of steroids.

A pending civil suit claims Beverly Mutrie knowingly, "wantonly and recklessly" allowed criminal activity to occur at the home she owns and where her son was living, making her liable for the officers' injuries.

Judge Kenneth McHugh has scheduled a Dec. 19 hearing to hear evidence related to a 9 mm pistol the attorney general's office says was one of two guns involved in the shootings and was purchased in 1989 by Cullen Mutrie's father.

The injured officers claim Beverly Mutrie provided her son with the deadly weapon, while she denies the claim.

Grant's new motion alleges that after Cullen was arrested for domestic assault in July 2010, when he was also alleged to have been in possession of steroids, Greenland police went to his mother's Hampton Falls home "to collect all of the weapons which she was making available to Cullen Mutrie at that location."

According to a Greenland police report, which Grant attached with his court motion, officers went to Beverly Mutrie's 4 Brown Road home with a warrant to seize weapons so her son would not have access to them.

Taken by police from her home were a MAC-10 automatic machine gun, a Remington .22-caliber rifle with a scope, a Winchester 12-gauge shotgun, two Browning 12-gauge shotguns, a Browning semiautomatic rifle, a Springfield .30-caliber rifle, an Interarms .22-caliber rifle, a Bushmaster .223 rifle with a scope, a Remington 12-gauge shotgun, a Ruger .22 revolver, an H&K 9 mm pistol, three Browning 9 mm pistols, a Smith and Wesson 9 mm handgun, a Browning .22 pistol and four BB rifles, according to the Greenland police report.

Also seized were shotgun shells, hundreds of rounds of various caliber ammunition and gun cases.

Grant wrote to the court Thursday that this new evidence further proves Beverly Mutrie facilitated and supported her son's "ongoing course of criminal activity," which led to the officers' injuries.

The DTF officers also claim there's a "reasonable probability" that Beverly Mutrie owned the 9 mm pistol bought by her late husband and used by her son during the shootings.

The officers ask the court to deny Beverly Mutrie's motion to dismiss their lawsuit, and to schedule a jury trial.